Commentary: Marguerite Griffith Tyler played role in formation of DAR chapter at LCSC

Lewis-Clark State College is commemorating its 125th anniversary in 2018. This occasional feature highlights dates of interest in the school's history.

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May 26, 1918: Marguerite Griffith Tyler was the daughter of Maj. Charles Tyler, a West Point graduate and career infantry officer who supervised the construction of Fort Wright near Spokane. Marguerite Griffith Tyler's name appears in reports from Washington State Agricultural College, now Washington State University. She graduated from the University of Michigan in the class of 1903 and would later say, "The day I graduated, I left cap and gown for the train going west to the Philippines and an entirely new world to me."

Upon her return, Tyler began teaching at the University of Cincinnati before following her father to Fort Sheridan, Ill., near Chicago. She earned her master's in chemistry from the University of Chicago in 1910 and came to Lewiston State Normal School after teaching in the botany department at renamed Washington State College. She became the first professor to provide science instruction at the Normal leading to a nursing degree in cooperation with St. Joseph's Hospital.

On this date, Tyler performed a special duty. As a longtime member of the Daughters of the American Revolution, she led the meeting in old Lewis Hall, the women's dormitory, at which the Alice Whitman Chapter of the D.A.R. was formed.

After leaving the college in 1927, Tyler completed her doctorate at Columbia University and taught at Limestone College in South Carolina and at the University of Kentucky, before becoming a professor at Athens College in Alabama in 1936. In 1941, federal agents arrived on campus to have a secret conference with her. The government needed her services full time at Oak Ridge, Tenn., working on a highly classified endeavor, the Manhattan Project.

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Steven Branting is a former Lewiston School District educator and author of several local history books.